Curiosity killed the cat

Inquisitiveness can lead to dangerous situations.

Original by Gary Martin.

What’s behind a phrase? More importantly, what’s ahead of the phrase? In today’s Knowledge Economy, people are encouraged to be inquisitive. But ingrained into the people culture is the old adage ‘Curiosity killed the cat’. This story and the one on the following page will help you get over it!

Everyone knows that, despite its supposed nine lives, curiosity killed the cat. Well, not quite. The “killed the cat” proverb originated as “care killed the cat.” By “care” the coiner of the expression meant “worry/sorrow” rather than our more usual contemporary “look after/provide for” meaning.

That form of the expression is first recorded in the English playwright Ben Jonson’s play Every Man in His Humour, 1598:

“Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care’ll kill a Cat, up-tails all, and a Louse for the Hangman.”

The play was one of the Tudor humours comedies, in which each major character is assigned a particular humour or trait. The play is thought to have been performed in 1598 by a troupe of actors including William Shakespeare and William Kempe.

Shakespeare was no slouch when it came to appropriating a memorable line and it crops up the following year in Much Ado About Nothing:

“What, courage man! What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.”

The proverbial expression “curiosity killed the cat,” which is usually used when attempting to stop someone asking unwanted questions, is much more recent. The earlier form was still in use in 1898, when it was defined in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:

“Care killed the Cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out.”

Curiosity hasn’t received a good press over the centuries. Saint Augustine wrote in Confessions, AD 397, that, in the eons before creating heaven and earth, God “fashioned hell for the inquisitive.” John Clarke, in Paroemiologia, 1639, suggested that “He that pryeth into every cloud may be struck with a thunderbolt.” In Don Juan, Lord Byron called curiosity “that low vice.” That bad opinion, and the fact that cats are notoriously inquisitive, lead to the source of their demise being changed from “care” to “curiosity.”

The earliest known printed reference that uses the curiosity form is O. Henry’s Schools and Schools, 1909:

“Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world catless.”

The earliest version that I have found of the precise current form of the proverb in print is from The Portsmouth Daily Times, March 1915, in a piece headed “The Height of Curiosity”:

Mother – “Don’t ask so many questions, child. Curiosity killed the cat.”
Willie – “What did the cat want to know, Mom?”

The frequent rejoinder to “curiosity killed the cat” is “satisfaction brought it back.” That brings us to the follow-up story on the next page where we learn the state of curiosity in the 21st century.